BEST SERVED COLD by Joe Abercrombie

BEST SERVED COLD by Joe Abercrombie

Narrated by Stephen Pacey

I Just Love a Happy Ending

As the title suggests this is a revenge tale—but a revenge tale like no other—with several different characters seeking to even the score with each other. But does the vengeance give the listener a sense of completeness? No, it is just like real life in that the deed leaves one feeling empty. Fortunately Abercrombie is not done; this book stands alone but is not alone. He has more sarcasm, despair and the futility of life to offer in the other volumes of this series.

Stephen Pacey is amazing as the narrator of Abercrombie’s First Law books. I can still hear him intoning the mercenary Captain General of the Thousand Swords, Nicamo Cosca’s sodden, yet still erudite, prose, “My friends, my friends!” Abercrombie has penned great characters and given Pacey many great lines to work with. This is a fine pairing: highly stylized writing and distinctive enthusiastic narration. The result is a fine Audiobook experience.

Original Review:

BEST SERVED COLD by Joe Abercrombie

Narrated by Michael Page

     I Just Love a Happy Ending

Set in the same realm as The First Law trilogy this book can be seen as a sequel of sorts in that it has some overlapping characters and contains events occurring after those in Abercrombie’s earlier work. The publisher is now marketing this book and two others (The Heroes and The Red Country as “The First Law World.) I hesitate to burden this series with the “Fantasy” label since magic plays such a small part in the proceedings. Neither does it fit in the category of Historical Fiction, despite being set in a pre-industrial society. It could be classified as a sub-genre of Sword and Sorcery majoring on the former. And while it is one of the bloodiest and crudest works of fiction that I can remember its chief attraction lies not in the abundance of gruesome action scenes—very well depicted I might add—but in the wit and wisdom of the various characters.  Joe Abercrombie is adept at inserting rapier wit into even the most frantic sword fight. It is the characters that keep the listener’s interest. I found myself being carried along with the narrative paying only loose attention and then a piece of dialog would rise up to the forefront of consciousness and make me laugh. This happens time and again in this novel and became the main attraction for me. It is one of the fine paradoxes of Abercrombie’s work, the characters are barbaric but the language transcends barbarism and enters the realm of the poetic.

Michael Page narrates this book. He delivers a journeyman’s effort with crisp diction that is easy to understand. It is during the more frantic scenes that he tends to raise his voice in a high-pitched manner making me wince and fumble for my volume-down button. When he is voicing the words of the Bloody Nine his voice reached a child’s high-pitched tone that is penetrating to the deepest recesses of the brain, almost causing an embolism. This novel has many, many different characters, unfortunately for us, Michael Page has only a handful of different character voices to spread around the cast. This, for me, often leads to confusion; hearing a voice from a previous scene but realizing that a different character is, in actually, in view. This is especially bad when the story flashes back to events taking place before the novel opens. These flashbacks are presented in the exact tome and same pacing as the balance of the book. More than once I found myself lost between the present day “now” in the narrative and the “then” of the flashbacks. In the main, Michael Page is more of an obstacle to be overcome rather than an enhancement contributing to the enjoyment of the story.

P.S. — Several Joe Abercrombie books have been reissued and the reviews for the older versions are no longer available unless you already own the title. So, if you wish to know what I thought about the earlier titles you can find them on my reviews page. In fact, this title is not currently available on Audible, so I am not sure who will be reading this. I am currently listening to The Heroes and will post this same PSA on that review.

Fictionados:

This title was originally released with Michael Page as the narrator. The older version is no longer available for purchase, but it is in our library so we can compare them head to head. I recently listened to both the Stephen Pacey version and the Michael Page version. These two narrators are so similar that at times I was convinced that it was really the same person working under two different names. But after extended listening I can say that they are not one and the same, although their voices have an uncanny similarity.  As usual repeated listenings provide much benefit that I have decided to listen to all of the Abercrombie books twice back to back.